Cuba agrees to sign UN civil rights agreement

Cuba has pledged to sign two key international agreements on civil and political rights, paving the way for regular UN monitoring of its human rights record from 2009.

The foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque, said Cuba would sign the UN international covenant on civil and political rights, and a similar pact on economic and social rights, by March next year. Havana has long refused to sign the pacts adopted in 1966 at the height of the cold war.

The announcement came as plainclothes police broke up a protest to mark international human rights day. There were no reports of injuries, and it was not clear whether marchers who were bundled into cars and driven away had been arrested.

Several march organisers were picked up before the event, according to Carlos Bosch, the communications secretary of the Independent Democrat Front - an anti-Castro organisation.

The scene at a park in the Vedado neighbourhood was similar to protests in past years. Only 14 protesters turned up, and they were shouted down and pushed by a pro-government group of more than 100 people, guided by men with walkie-talkies.

The counter-protesters shouted "traitors" and "mercenaries" and occasionally shoved the dissenters. "Fidel, Fidel, Fidel!" the counter-protesters chanted, in support of the country's frail leader, Fidel Castro.

In a related incident, about 15 foreign women, most of them Spanish, were expelled from Cuba after participating in a traditional Sunday march of the Ladies in White, a Cuban group which gathers every week to demand the release of their imprisoned husbands and other relatives.

Susan McDade, the resident UN coordinator in Cuba, said Pérez Roque's announcement that his country would sign the two agreements was "extremely positive".

It is unclear if assenting to the agreements will mark a change in Cuba's treatment of dissidents, who are typically characterised as "mercenaries" paid by the United States to undermine the island's communist rule. Cuba maintains that it respects human rights better than most countries by providing its people with a broad social safety net that includes free medical care, low-cost food and heavily subsidised utilities and other services.